Ten reasons why we love audiobooks

Easy. Fun. Affordable. Three things every mum wants when it comes to a little me time. Audiobooks are a brilliant buy and every busy parent’s friend: just add chocolate and a sneaky glass of something cold and fizzy. Here’s a few reasons why we heart a good audiobook…

There’s minimum effort involved

In fact, once you’ve downloaded the thing, there’s pretty much zero effort involved and about how many things in your life can you say THAT these days? You don’t even have to turn the page. Or search the house for that bookmark Aunt Barbara bought you for Christmas 2003. There’s no loaning the paperback to your sister or returning it to the library covered in baby sick. Press play, listen, lose yourself.

Fun for the whole family

You deserve a break. So why not let someone else do the reading at bedtime? The kids would probably prefer some famous actress voicing every single Beatrix/Harry Potter character than rubbish mum anyway. An audiobook doesn’t get tired after 20 minutes and want to cut the story short so they can go downstairs and eat dinner. And – bliss – an audiobook makes a roadtrip seem a little bit more bearable. Even when the sat nav’s on the blink and the sweets ran out an hour ago.

You can multitask!

Listen to a thriller while washing-up! Enjoy a juicy celeb biog while sorting laundry! Catch up with the latest Booker Prize winner while running off that last bit of baby weight! Or – let’s be realistic - crash out with trash-lit while painting your nails. Your book, your way, hands-free.

Like Night Nurse, but better

When baby’s got colic or just a chronic case of the let’s-stay-awake-all-night-it’ll-be-fun fever, an audiobook is your saviour. Listen to something soothing while you’re doing the night shift and that 4am feed won’t seem quite so punishing. Our tip: stay away from ghost stories. (Want some suggestions from us? Here are 12 audiobooks to listen to during the nightfeed)

Here’s one I made earlier…

There’s so much chaos in raising a family that it’s a relief to have one thing that’s totally under your control. Download a stack of audiobooks to your phone, iPod, tablet or Kindle and then you can listen wherever and whenever you want. Plan a year ahead if you want to be super-organised. Your smugness will be off the scale.

Every day is like holiday

Here’s a cold, hard fact about motherhood: you have to make the most of every minute of me time because they are few and far between. So on the off-chance a quiet three minutes looms into view, you have to jump on it. Listening to one chapter of your fave fiction during CBeebies is the equivalent of three days on a sunlounger in St Tropez.

Role model, me?

If the only time you get near a novel is in bed at 11pm, chances are your children won’t get to see you and be struck by the notion that education is brilliant and mum is a genius role model who taught me everything I could ever have hoped to learn about life. And that would be a shame. But making audiobooks part of everyday life - listening together in the kitchen, family room, car – instils a love for literature that will stay with them forever. You did that. You.

It’s university, but without the lifelong debt

Mums have no time for evening classes. They can’t pop out to the local museum for an IQ-enhancing talk on the history of concrete. So they have to get creative and banish the baby-brain blues with an audiobook. Call it self-improvement, if you like. We call it an easy way to brush up on your Spanish before those two weeks in Mallorca. Una copa de vino, por favor…

You’re spoilt for choice

With such little work involved, why not have two or three books on the go at the same time, just for the hell of it? Variety is, after all, the spice of reading. This summer we’re loving the 20th anniversary re-issue of Alex Garland’s The Beach, narrated by Game of Thrones’ Alfie Allen, and we’re mixing it up with edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller I See You, plus Louis de Bernières’ Blue Dog, a heartwarming story of a little boy sent to live with his grandpa and rescue dog in the Australian Outback.

They’re a cheap laugh

When you’ve had a rough day but there’s no time to work your way through a box-set of 30 Rock, a comedy audiobook is guaranteed to cheer you up. Most comedians who’ve written their autobiog (or fiction) have handily narrated it too – everyone from Tina Fey to Miranda Hart, Amy Schumer, Steve Coogan, Lena Dunham and David Walliams – so it’s like being at your own private comedy club. Lift your mood with one listen.

Download Amazon Audible

The greatest stories, told by the greatest voices – yours to download and enjoy whenever and wherever you want. Pick from 200,000 pulse-racing thrillers, blood-curdling chillers, bestsellers and new sensations hot off the press. Enjoy the very best in fiction and non-fiction, brought to life by the best voices.

When you can’t switch off and drift off to nod – thanks to heartburn, aches, pains, restless legs, wind, stress, you name it – try these soothing audiobooks, all available to download from Audible on Amazon.

Each month, Childs Farm's resident skincare expert will be tackling all your skincare concerns and giving you the correct know-how, to ensure the whole family has healthy and gorgeous-looking skin. This month's instalment is understanding what eczema is and what the number one treatment is...

When you have a newborn baby, you want to do everything to give them the best start in life and there are so many tips, advice and methods that it can be overwhelming! One thing you can get off your list is choosing which newborn nappy to use.